by Ann Cameron
We planted everything one Saturday. We worked all day long, getting the ground smooth and even, and laying the little seeds down in rows. The whole time I felt the catalog cats were there, swirling their tails in the air.
We finished just before the sun went down.
My mother gave Huey and me baths. She said we were darker than the garden. She said we were dirty enough that she could grow plants on our hands and knees.
When we were clean, we had supper, with chocolate pie for dessert, and went to bed.
Huey went to sleep right away. But I didn’t.
I put my jacket on over my pajamas and went out the back door to the garden. In the dark it looked as if the garden was sleeping. I lay down on the grass. It was cold and a little wet.
I looked up. I thought all the catalog cats were sitting on the roof of the garage, staring at me. Over the top of the garage was the moon, a little moon with sharp horns. There were birds rustling in the dark branches of the trees.
The seeds were dreaming, I thought. I put my mouth next to the ground, and I spoke to the seeds very softly: “Grow! And you corn seeds, grow high as the house!”
In just one week the seeds did start to grow, and we watered them and weeded them. By the end of the summer we had vegetables from the garden every night. And the corn did grow as high as the house, although there wasn’t very much of it, and it was almost too tough to eat. The best thing of all was Huey’s house made of flowers. After a while the flowers dropped their petals and turned into beans, and we ate the beans for supper. So what Huey made was probably the first house anyone ever played in and then ate. Catalog cats are strange—but a house you eat for dinner is stranger yet.
Because of Figs
In the summer I like to lie in the grass and look at clouds and eat figs. Figs are soft and purple and delicious. Their juice runs all over my face, and I eat them till I’m so full I can’t eat any more.
Because of figs I got a strange birthday present, and because of that birthday present I had some trouble. This is what happened.
It all started a long time ago when I had my fourth birthday. My father came home from work and said, “I have something for you, Julian! Go look in the car.”
I ran to look, and Huey ran after me, tripping on his shoelaces.
When we looked in the back seat of the car, there was a tree! A small tree with just a few leaves.
We ran back to my father. “A tree for a birthday present!” I said.
“A tree for a birthday present!” Huey said. He was two years old, and he always repeated everything I said.
“It’s a fig tree,” my father told me. “It will grow as fast as you grow, Julian, and in a few years it will have figs that you can pick and eat.”
I could hardly wait to grow my own sweet juicy purple figs. We planted the tree by our back fence, and I gave it water every day. And then one morning it had two new leaves.
“Fig tree, you’re growing!” I said. I thought I should be growing too. There is a mark on the wall in the bathroom of our house, where my father measures us, and I ran into the house to measure myself against my old mark. I pressed my hand against my head, flat to the wall, and checked where my hand was compared to the old mark. I wasn’t any taller.
I walked outside to the fig tree. “I’m not any taller,” I said. I touched the fig tree’s new leaves. “I want to grow, too!” I said. “You know how to grow, and I don’t!” I told the fig tree.
The fig tree didn’t say a word.
“Maybe what makes you grow will make me grow,” I told it. And very quickly, I picked the fig tree’s new leaves and ate them. They tasted worse than spinach. I was pretty sure they would make me grow.
I did a little growing dance around the fig tree, with my hands raised high in the air.
It worked. I stayed taller than Huey. I got taller than my fig tree. And every time my fig tree got new leaves, I saw them and ate them secretly. And when nobody was looking, I did a growing dance.
“If you don’t like this, fig tree, just tell me,” I’d say.
The fig tree never said a word.
After a year my father looked at my fig tree. “It’s a nice little tree,” he said, “but it isn’t growing.” And he started putting fertilizer on my tree, and he looked at it more often.
But when new leaves showed, I saw them first. And I wanted to get taller, so I ate them.
Another whole year went by.
My mark on the bathroom wall went up three inches. I was four inches taller than Huey, and my arm muscle was twice as big as his.
The fig tree hadn’t grown at all.
“Fig tree,” I said when I took its new leaves, “I’m sorry, but I want to grow tall.”
And the fig tree didn’t say a word.
One day my father was in the garden. He walked over to my fig tree. “Julian,” he said, “something is the matter with your tree. It hasn’t grown. It hasn’t grown at all.”
“Really?” I said. I didn’t look at my father. I didn’t look at my fig tree either.
“Do you have any idea what could be wrong?” my father asked.
I looked straight at my feet. I crossed my toes inside in my shoes. “Oh, no.”
“I think that tree’s just plain no good. We’ll pull it out of the ground and get another one.”
“Oh no! Don’t do that!” I begged.
“Julian,” my father said, “do you know something about this tree that I don’t know?”
I didn’t say anything. And I was glad, very glad, that the fig tree didn’t say a word. Finally I said, “It’s my tree. Give it one more chance.”
“No use waiting around!” my father said. His hand was around the trunk of my tree.
“Please!” I said.
My father’s hand relaxed. “After all, it is your tree,” he said. “Just tell me when you want another one.”
All afternoon I couldn’t think of anything but all the little fig leaves I’d eaten. I was pretty sure I knew why the fig tree didn’t grow.
At bedtime I couldn’t sleep, and when Huey went to sleep, I got up and sneaked outside to my fig tree. I told God I knew that the fig leaves belonged to the fig tree. I told the fig tree I was sorry, and I promised I would never eat its leaves again.
The fig tree didn’t say a word—but the next week it got two new leaves, and kept them. That night I went to bed happy, and I dreamed a good dream. My fig tree was higher than the house, I was almost as tall as my dad, and there were big figs, juicy figs, sweet figs, felling all over the lawn.
My Very Strange Teeth
My mother and Huey were listening. My father and I were talking.
“Well,” my father said, “if you wait long enough, it will fall out.” He was talking about my tooth, my right bottom front tooth.
“How long do I have to wait?” I asked. Because I had two right bottom front teeth—one firm little new one pushing in, and one wiggly old one.
“I can’t say,” my father said. “Maybe a month, maybe two months. Maybe less.”
“I don’t want to wait,” I said. “I want one tooth there, and I don’t want to wait two months!”
“All right!” said my father. “I’ll take care of it!” He jumped out of his chair and ran out the door to the garage. He was back in a minute, carrying something—a pair of pliers!
“Your tooth is a little loose already,” my father said. “So I’ll just put the pliers in your mouth for a second, twist, and the tooth will come out. You won’t feel a thing!”
“I won’t feel a thing?” I looked at the pliers—huge, black-handled pliers with a long pointed tip. I thought I would feel a thing. I thought it would hurt.
“Shall I?” said my dad. He raised the pliers toward my mouth.
“NO!” I said. “Not that way! Don’t you know any other way to take out a tooth?”
“Well,” he answered, “when I was a boy the main way was with a pair of pliers—but there was another way. Just you wait.”
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He jumped up again and ran to the closet. When he came back, he had a spool of black thread. Thread didn’t look as painful as pliers.
“This is a simple way,” my father said. “Just let me tie this thread around your old tooth.”
“All right,” I said.
Very carefully my father tied the end of the thread around my old tooth. That didn’t hurt.
“Now,” my father said, “stand here by the door.”
I stood by the kitchen door, and my father tied the other end of the thread to the doorknob.
“Now what?” I said.
“Now,” my father said, “you just close your eyes …”
“What are you going to do?” I asked. I wasn’t going to close my eyes when I didn’t know what was happening.
“This is a good method from the old days,” my father said. “You close your eyes. Then—very suddenly—I shove the kitchen door shut. Snap! The thread pulls the tooth right out!”
I looked at the kitchen door. It was a lot bigger than I was—and about 20 million times bigger than my tooth.
“Wont it—hurt?” I was really afraid I might lose my whole head with the tooth.
“Oh, just a little,” my father said. “Just for a second.”
“No thanks,” I said. “Please take this thread off my tooth!”
“All right then.” My father shrugged his shoulders and took the string off my tooth.
“Don’t you know any other way?”
“There is one other way,” my father said. “Go into the bathroom, stand over the sink, and just keep pushing the tooth with your finger till it comes out.”
“Will that hurt?”
“You can stop pushing when it hurts,” my father said. “Of course it takes longer—I would be very glad to do it with either the pliers or the doorknob.”
“No thanks,” I said. I started pushing on my tooth with my finger. “Why can’t I push it out here?” I asked. “Why do I have to do it over the sink?”
“When you get the tooth out,” my father said, “it’ll bleed. That’s why you take the tooth out over the sink—so you have cold water to rinse your mouth and stop the bleeding.”
“How much bleeding?”
“Some. Enough so you should use the sink.”
I decided right then that my old tooth could stay in my mouth right beside the new one as long as it wanted—two months, two years, any time.
“I’ve changed my mind,” I said. “That tooth can stay, even if it is stupid to have two teeth where one should be.”
“It’s not stupid,” my mother said, “just unusual. You have very special teeth. I bet prehistoric cavemen would have liked to have your teeth.”
“Why?”
“They ate a lot of raw meat,” my mother said. “It must have been hard for a cave boy to eat raw meat with teeth missing. But you have two teeth in the space of one. You could have eaten mastodon meat or saber-toothed tiger meat, or anything the hunters brought home.”
A cave boy with two teeth in place of one. I wished I had a time machine to go back to the very old days—before pliers and before doorknobs—back to the caves. I curled my lower lip under.
“You look like a cave boy,” my mother said.
“You should show the kids at school your teeth,” Huey said.
“Maybe I will,” I said.
I went to my room and made a sign for myself. It read—
I wore the sign at recess the next day.
My friends came around. “What does that mean?” they asked.
“Uh. Uh.” I grunted and held up a penny. I couldn’t explain. If I talked, they’d see my teeth for free.
After a while one girl gave me a penny, and I showed her my special cave-boy teeth. Some of the other kids had missing teeth, but nobody had two teeth in one space like mine.
I ran all the way home after school to tell my mother what happened. I said, “Tomorrow I’ll show more kids!”
I picked up an apple that lay on the kitchen table and took a big bite.
“Ow!” I said, because I could feel my old tooth twist in my mouth. In a minute, without too much blood, it was lying on my hand. “OW!” I said again, not because it hurt, but because right then was the end of my special, mastodon-eating, double-biting, cave-boy teeth.
Gloria Who Might Be My Best Friend
If you have a girl for a friend, people find out and tease you. That’s why I didn’t want a girl for a friend—not until this summer, when I met Gloria.
It happened one afternoon when I was walking down the street by myself. My mother was visiting a friend of hers, and Huey was visiting a friend of his. Huey’s friend is five and so I think he is too young to play with. And there aren’t any kids just my age. I was walking down the street feeling lonely.
A block from our house I saw a moving van in front of a brown house, and men were carrying in chairs and tables and bookcases and boxes full of I don’t know what. I watched for a while, and suddenly I heard a voice right behind me.
“Who are you?”
I turned around and there was a girl in a yellow dress. She looked the same age as me. She had curly hair that was braided into two pigtails with red ribbons at the ends.
“I’m Julian,” I said. “Who are you?”
“I’m Gloria,” she said. “I come from Newport. Do you know where Newport is?”
I wasn’t sure, but I didn’t tell Gloria. “It’s a town on the ocean,” I said.
“Right,” Gloria said. “Can you turn a cartwheel?”
She turned sideways herself and did two cartwheels on the grass.
I had never tried a cartwheel before, but I tried to copy Gloria. My hands went down in the grass, my feet went up in the air, and—I fell over.
I looked at Gloria to see if she was laughing at me. If she was laughing at me, I was going to go home and forget about her.
But she just looked at me very seriously and said, “It takes practice,” and then I liked her.
“I know where there’s a bird’s nest in your yard,” I said.
“Really?” Gloria said. “There weren’t any trees in the yard, or any birds, where I lived before.”
I showed her where a robin lives and has eggs. Gloria stood up on a branch and looked in. The eggs were small and pale blue. The mother robin squawked at us, and she and the father robin flew around our heads.
“They want us to go away,” Gloria said. She got down from the branch, and we went around to the front of the house and watched the moving men carry two rugs and a mirror inside.
“Would you like to come over to my house?” I said.
“All right,” Gloria said, “if it is all right with my mother.” She ran in the house and asked.
It was all right, so Gloria and I went to my house, and I showed her my room and my games and my rock collection, and then I made strawberry Kool-Aid and we sat at the kitchen table and drank it.
“You have a red mustache on your mouth,” Gloria said.
“You have a red mustache on your mouth, too,” I said.
Gloria giggled, and we licked off the mustaches with our tongues.
“I wish you’d live here a long time,” I told Gloria.
Gloria said, “I wish I would too.”
“I know the best way to make wishes,” Gloria said.
“What’s that?” I asked.
“First you make a kite. Do you know how to make one?”
“Yes,” I said, “I know how.” I know how to make good kites because my father taught me. We make them out of two crossed sticks and folded newspaper.
“All right,” Gloria said, “that’s the first part of making wishes that come true. So let’s make a kite.”
We went out into the garage and spread out sticks and newspaper and made a kite. I fastened on the kite string and went to the closet and got rags for the tail.
“Do you have some paper and two pencils?” Gloria asked. “Because now we make the wishes.”
I didn’t
know what she was planning, but I went in the house and got pencils and paper.
“All right,” Gloria said. “Every wish you want to have come true you write on a long thin piece of paper. You don’t tell me your wishes, and I don’t tell you mine. If you tell, your wishes don’t come true. Also, if you look at the other person’s wishes, your wishes don’t come true.”
Gloria sat down on the garage floor and started writing her wishes. I wanted to see what they were—but I went to the other side of the garage and wrote my own wishes instead. I wrote:
1. I wish I could see the catalog cats.
2. I wish the fig tree would be the tallest in town.
3. I wish I’d be a great soccer player.
4. I wish I could ride in an airplane.
5. I wish Gloria would stay here and be my best friend.
I folded my five wishes in my fist and went over to Gloria.
“How many wishes did you make?” Gloria asked.
“Five,” I said. “How many did you make?”
“Two,” Gloria said.
I wondered what they were.
“Now we put the wishes on the tail of the kite,” Gloria said. “Every time we tie one piece of rag on the tail, we fasten a wish in the knot. You can put yours in first.”
I fastened mine in, and then Gloria fastened in hers, and we carried the kite into the yard.
“You hold the tail,” I told Gloria, “and I’ll pull.”
We ran through the back yard with the kite, passed the garden and the fig tree, and went into the open field beyond our yard.
The kite started to rise. The tail jerked heavily like a long white snake. In a minute the kite passed the roof of my house and was climbing toward the sun.
We stood in the open field, looking up at it. I was wishing I would get my wishes.
“I know it’s going to work!” Gloria said.
“How do you know?”
